Prospective First Minister Gething sets out housing vision for Wales

As First Minister, Vaughan Gething say he will speed up building social housing to tackle the housing crisis and boost quality, green jobs across Wales.

Speaking to Wrexham.com the prospective First Minister said he would introduce measures to ‘help ensure that public funds are converted into much-needed social housing as soon as possible’.

Commenting on one local hot topic, the Local Development Plan, he backed the local Labour Group’s decision to back the LDP, saying he was ‘proud’ of their actions.

With the housing element of the LDP coming into focus recently following two large developments getting the green light, we pointed to junction upgrades and infrastructure no longer happening to support such developments, and was told a new Task Force would be created for a review of the planning system in Wales.

Vaughan Gething said, “I’m actually really interested in talking about the future of not just housing, but making sure everyone has a good place to call home. We are here in Creating Enterprise, which has shown the innovation that it’s possible to deliver and accelerate house building with really high standards, and actually help us to meet our climate obligations as well.

“Successfully deployed innovation is part of the answer. Part of the rest of the answer is you’ve got to have more stability across the economy. We’ve seen a number of house builders go under, that’s partly due to the last 13 years of occupants of Downing Street.

“But, we also do need to think about how we bring more land supply forward for development in a way that’s predictable.

“There are different parts of the system that need to be part of that. If you don’t have the opportunity to understand how that land gets brought forward, you end up with pepperpot developments, or you stop land coming forward for development.

“Every local authority knows it has a challenge to meet.

“We’re sitting in Conwy Council today and there were dozens of families in bed and breakfast accommodation on Christmas Day. That’s because we don’t have enough decent homes for people to live in. So we know that right across Wales, and north Wales, we need more homes for local people.

“To do that, why I’m talking about bringing together a task force is to understand what we could and should do within the planning system itself within decision making.

“But, also the different parts that need to go together, including highways and others, to get predictability, certainty, and a bit more speed into how that land is made available.

“So it is a range of things. It’s the economy. It’s also the decision making and the supply of land. But it’s also about the successful implementation of successful innovation.”

With the developments in Wrexham recently approved following the LDP decision likely not to be the solution to the around 4,000 council housing wait list due likely £250,000+ asking prices per unit, we asked what the answer would be.

He replied, “That’s exactly why I’m having a focus on social housing.

“It is the mix of it.  It is about council housing, it’s about the housing associations, like the one we’re here today with. It is also about cooperative housing a part of the answer to.

“For all of that to happen, you have still got to address the issue about land supply uncertainty.”

Pointing to a large 120+ home housing association development plan nearby in Abergele he added, “That could have gone ahead if there was more certainty on the land supply. What you could have found is some of those homes could have already been created, there could be families living those homes.

“I know that every council has a waiting list that it wants to be able to meet. It is about the mix, private demand is part of it as indeed is social housing.

“That big focus means you can have homes for people that are affordable for people of all income brackets, and that’s what I’m committed to doing.”

With the extraordinary scenes in courtroom and the Guildhall chamber around Wrexham’s Local Development Plan we asked if he felt such LDPs should be taken out of local hands, where debates can be ‘nimby’ style, or as we have seen, quite personal. Many councillors opposed to the plan have been unhappy with a process that they saw as the Welsh Government Inspector approving the deposit plan, and returned it to them for a rubber stamp.

Vaughan Gething replied, “What you can’t do I think is refuse to meet their obligations.

“I’m standing to be the leader of Welsh Labour, and standing to be the leader of the country, and that means you have got to make decisions.

“If you don’t decide on a local development process, then you allow yourself to be open to people developing in areas you don’t want them to. Equally you stop the crucial development that the local people need.

“If we’re going to create the volume of homes that we need, and the quality of home we need so everyone really does have a place to call home,  you can’t avoid your responsibilities.

“I am proud that Labour councillors in Wrexham made sure that the authority did meet its responsibilities not just to the law, but much more importantly, the people that they are there to serve.”

One core debate on the LDP adoption locally surrounded councillors having to make an apparent choice to vote ‘illegally’ against the adoption of the plan. With “Trumpish” style politics being referred to locally by some councillors, we asked what his leadership style would be if he was elected First Minister by Labour members.

Gething said, “I think you can be optimistic, positive and interesting without being a populist who wants to destroy democracy? I really don’t think it’s that difficult to do.

“I think you can be bright, positive, optimistic about the future, you can call out and address things that you think are wrong. You can do all of that without turning in to a populist.

“If you look at someone like me, I have had a life serving in the trade union movement as a steward, as a training employment lawyer, understanding the difficulty you face when other people don’t do the right thing, either the laws they create, or in the way that they treat people at work.

“My career in the Senedd going through the extraordinary challenges the pandemic, we asked people to do the right thing, we never sunk down into the sewer of populism where you broadly say, ‘you don’t need to obey the law if you don’t like the people that are making it‘.

“We need to reset what democracy is for. Actually you can have integrity and you can still be excited and positive about the future.

“I think that’s so important because you need not to give people a reason to vote against something, I think you need to give people a good reason to vote for something.

“That’s what I think that we’re setting up in this contest and I hope beyond”.

Vaughan Gething is up against Jeremy Miles to become the new First Minister of Wales. Voting is due to begin on the 16th February with a new leader announced on 16th March.

Top pic: Vaughan Gething in Rhyl on Friday